Reflection

The entire point of this project was to learn about and even improve our
own, and others' resilience. As a whole class, we investigated four lenses of
resilience, Personal, Societal, Local, and Ecological resilience, we also
learned tips and tricks to becoming a more resilient person in general. The
reason we focused on the topic of resilience, was the pandemic we are all
experiencing and suffering from, which subsequently requires lots of
everyday resilience to avoid crumbling. We started by delving into our own
resilience and past events that require high amounts of resilience, we then
wrote about that experience. To further our understanding of personal
resilience, we also watched videos on how to become a resilient person
and the benefits of resilience. Secondly, we researched the lens of societal
resilience by reading excerpts from “A Man's Search for Meaning”, watching
videos of Victor Frankl discussing resilience, and read and watched many
people's accounts of the holiest and ways in which they survived. Then, we
moved into the topic of local resilience, interviewing local community
members to learn about a time in which they struggled and used their
resilience to overcome their struggles, for which, I decided to interview my
mother. To wrap up our understanding of resilience before starting our
projects, was to learn about Ecological resilience, in doing so we read a
deep and complicated article about ecological resilience, this subject
captured my interest much more than the other lenses, mostly due to my
interest in animals, ecology, and climate change.

For my project I chose two lenses to focus on, Community/ societal and
Ecological. These topics seem to fit together seamlessly since ecosystems,
natural disasters, and climate change have a huge effect on the welfare, or
resilience, of communities and societies. To properly and fully get my point
across, I decided to use videos and pictures, I made three videos each with
a different ecological topic that greatly affects community resilience. The
three topics encompass the effects of wildfires, loss of marine biodiversity,
and flooding in northern India. I chose the topics because they are very
prominent in today's world and they are problems that not only affect the
areas mentioned in my videos but across the entire world, in other words,
every single person will be affected and their resilience tested due to the
consequences. While creating the videos for this project I faced both
physical and mental difficulties, physically, creating this project was quite
time-consuming and confusing, I started by creating one slideshow per
video with animated pictures, then I used a screencast app to record the
slide show with a voice-over. Another difficulty I had with creating this
project was that I am quite emotional about the environment and It was
really hard for me to read about some of the horrible things that are
happening as a result of climate change and reckless humans. But that
also spurred me forward with my project and my message.

Throughout this project I was able to gain a deeper understanding of what

resilience is, it's not just being hard-hearted, ignoring the problem, or
acting tough, It’s learning how to cope with your difficult situations and
accept them eventually. I believe that many people, including myself before
this project, assume that resilience is pushing through your troubles
without giving them a thought, being stoic, and not letting yourself be sad
or cry. However, this thought is incorrect and will cause someone to break
after a while. Some people are born resilient and some must learn ways to
become resilient. I never really thought of myself as resilient until I was able
to look back at my life and some of the hardships I have endured, and
throughout this project, I picked up some new resilience-enhancing tricks.
Such as looking for the bright side or little happiness and putting my
problems into perspective. After completing this project I notice the
amazing resilience in other people and even in myself.